Just let the babies have what they want, and they’ll stop committing violent, -motivated crimes! It’s obvious we should be voting for the far right! /s
Over the past week, three search and rescue operations have been started for tourists who have gone missing during treks on far-flung islands, including one for the popular TV presenter Michael Mosley, who was found dead on the island of Symi....
The project was a test to see how artificial intelligence might change one of the most delicate types of human interaction: the interpersonal apology. The companies who make AI-powered chatbots suggest we should find ways to insert them into our lives when we don’t know what to say or how to say it. That’s all well and good...
Well, they did fly the flag upside down, in black and white, and next to Nazi flags…so I think they don’t want to be Canadian. Maybe part of the reason is that they’re not polite or apologetic.
Also, they were trying to overthrow the federal government, so I think this argument has a lot of merit.
To be fair, a lot of them probably didn’t know that, and were there because they were angry about something else and didn’t know who to blame. Plus they had nothing better to do with their time and money but to give it to a national-scale sham.
Considering the relationship between heat and aggression, plus the impacts on the ecosystems of the world, climate change is probably a factor in this. Which suggests this might just be the peak…“so far”.
This new project from some of the folks who worked on the first 3 Elder Scrolls games looks great. It looks certain to be backed as well as it’s already at 99% on Kickstarter with a couple more weeks to go....
“Find another job ASAP or we might shut the branch down. Also if you quit, you’ll get a severance package and we’ll give you a glowing recommendation for your new job.”
We call them first-person shooters now. And I think they were usually called Doom-clones. But it makes sense that they’d use a word like that when a word for the genre hadn’t really been codified by that point.
I saw another article describing something, perhaps this game, as a “Theme Hospital-like”. Theme Hospital-like is not a genre.
Souls-like is likely in a similar situation as Rogue-like or perhaps “Doom Clone” from back in the day, where a new genre is emerging and there isn’t yet an agreed-upon term for it. Rogue-like stuck around probably because it was such a niche game/genre for so long and people had been calling it that for maybe decades before the term went mainstream. Doom Clone died out because the genre branched out so much.
I wouldn’t necessarily want to reduce “Souls-like” to another genre, because it may very well be its own genre. It may end up “growing” a new name like First-Person Shooters did, or it may end up sticking around because “X-like” may be the new thing to do.
I’m just getting annoyed by seeing things like “Stardew Valley-like”, “Dragon Quest-like”, “Theme Hospital-like”…those tell you nothing if you don’t know the game they’re talking about, and if you DO know the game they’re talking about, you might get the wrong idea what the game is about because the author is making a bad comparison.
Yeah, Rogue-like is a notable exception. The difference is that it’s an established term for a genre, whereas a single journalist saying something like “Theme Hospital-like” is not a genre.
My dislike of it stems from the marketing ploy aspect. It feels like clickbait; authors trying to get hits from people looking up (or “interested in”) a certain game even if it may not be an accurate description.
I think the Doom-like FPS’s are getting called “Boomer Shooters” now, lol…but we’re ironically in a situation where we need a new term again. Or we would be if that genre were popular in the mainstream.
I think describing the game in the article as a “Management Sim inspired by Theme Hospital/Bullfrog” would get across the same concept, for example. I don’t think it’s difficult. I think it’s just becoming a popular thing for gaming journalists to do
Given the choice between an online community with assholes being moderated away and an online community without asshole moderation, I’m going to choose the one where assholes get warned, muted, and banned.
My favourite subreddit had a rule, “Be Civil”. I much preferred that sub over ones that didn’t have that rule (or one like it). Too many people don’t know how to behave in public forums, and those people make the internet a lot less pleasant. See Facebook and Instagram comments if you’d like some examples.
I don’t play many online games, except with friends exclusively, or where there is no chat (especially voice chat). If there were games that had moderated communities that banned assholes, then I’d be more likely to venture into that world…and maybe I’d even start turning on my mic.
Yes. Players who are invested in winning. Not players who have poor emotional regulation or social behaviour and are invested in being assholes.
It’s called sportsmanship. Yet some online games sound worse than middle school sports games… probably because, for years, nobody got punished for acting like a middle schooler who can’t control their emotions or behaviour.
As for your statement on toxicity preventing you from playing multiplayer doesn’t seem true. There are plenty of games where you will never see toxicity and you still don’t play any of them so that can’t be what’s stopping you.
I’m fascinated by how you know so much about the games I don’t play! Lol
As long as people aren’t breaking the rules regarding hate speech
Hate speech and threats of violence are what the article is about.
So if you agree that rape threats and certain words (that constitute hate speech) are ok to ban, then you’re in agreement with the article and other people saying “People shouldn’t need to grow a thicker skin”.
Unless you’re against hate speech, but in favour of threats of violence, but I don’t think you are just because you didn’t explicitly say it, haha
I used up play a ton of Doom mods years ago and a lot of the TCs were fun but lacked substance beyond the surface. Some of the new ones are cool but overly complex. (The Sonic cart game has an hour long tutorial before you start). I was a big fan of Simon’s Destiny, the Castlevania mod for Doom....
I always got the feeling that this game was seen as a classic. I never owned a Gamecube growing up, but I’m pretty sure I remember my friend having one and playing Sunshine a bit (although he was way more into Zelda and Smash)....
I’ve been buying there under the presumption it was the digital equivalence of buying CD’s like I used to.
Why presume when you can read the T&C?
That was how it was sold to me
I don’t believe it was.
And I’m not here to support Steam/Valve. I much prefer GOG, because when you buy a game on GOG, the files are literally yours to use. Buy a copy, download it to your hard drive, copy it to a USB drive, plug the USB drive into a machine that’s never been connected to the internet (let alone your GOG account) and boot up both copies at once.
YMMV when it comes to online multiplayer over severs. I’m a retro gamer, so that’s not my area of expertise, lol. I think for those, you would need separate accounts to play online together.
When you go into a store and buy something, you tend to leave with a physical product. Not so with Steam.
You mention a “library” of games…when you take something out of the library, it’s not yours.
How do you normally access your games? Through the Steam platform, or by running executables directly from your machine (without needing an internet connection)? Because if you usually use the Steam platform, that was the first hint that you don’t “own” the games. And if you need an internet connection, that was the second hint.
Another big hint is, as you said, the game is tied to your account. Not your person. Your account is explicitly non-transferable (e.g., in death). As well, they can remove your access to your account for not being in line with the T&C.
You buy a drill from a store, then you use the drill to break someone’s lock. But you still own the drill – neither Home Depot nor Ryobi has a legal right to take that drill away from you, even if you get caught.
Again, I’m not defending Steam here. This is why I recommend people look into DRM-free services like GOG if you actually care about “owning” your games.
Otherwise, good luck with your class-action lawsuit against Steam. It’s not like I have an empty Steam library, so if a class-action actually won, I’d benefit from that too. I just don’t think it’ll ever happen, thanks to the T&C which most people seem to generally know and accept.
OTOH, Steam is an international company, and there are different standards and such for death certificates across the world. So Steam would have to have some expertise in verifying death certificates from any country they operate in.
Increasing overhead and liability when they’d probably earn very little good will is usually not the best business strategy. I don’t think they’d do it unless they were legally compelled to.
Most companies are not international, and don’t have to deal with verifying the death certificates from 100+ countries.
The challenge is that dividing it up would add overhead to Steam support, especially if the estate does try to break up an account into games. Not to mention that there’s really no “cash value” on digital games, since there are things like sales, giveaways, bundles, etc.
It obviously won’t bring them down, but assuming extra work and liability isn’t something they’d do our of the goodness of their hearts.
We pay to license Steam games and put them in our Steam libraries. This isn’t a new idea…it was a criticism of Steam when it was new, and it was why there was so much pushback. If you’re buying expensive brand-new games on Steam rather than on a DRM platform (or waiting until the cost lowers enough to be worth getting only a license), then you’ve been using Steam wrong.
I’m not even defending Steam here. If you want DRM-free games, buy from GOG. Steam has more games, and sometimes lower prices…but you’re not buying a game that you own. It was never a secret. Hence why they marketed it as a Steam Library. You can use whatever you want in the library, but you own none of it.
Lol…your personal library at home is composed of physical objects that you bought and assembled into what you call a library. A better word might be a “collection” rather than a library, but we’re getting into semantics here.
You seem to be getting very emotional about this. Your anger should really be directed towards Steam, or maybe yourself for not reading the T&C.
DRM is used for copy and piracy protection, yes, but it encompasses many kinds of digital rights, including access. Steam itself is DRM – they manage the rights of which account holders can access which digital games. Even with Steam’s Offline mode (which not all games support), you can run into situations where you can’t play your game offline because of update issues.
Give the Steam T&C a skim, and find out whether you own your games forever. And if I’m wrong and you find something in the T&C that invalidates what I’ve said, then I’d be happy to see it.
Digital content doesn’t fall under the same rules as physical items, for better or for worse.
In the EU there is legal precedent to give access to every account of a deceased person to their next of kin.
I thought we were discussing whether or not a game purchased on Steam is something that the purchaser “owns” just like a physical game…
But if that precedent is there, it’ll be interesting to see it play out. Steam users in the EU have definitely died before, but I guess nobody has ever put one in their will yet? Or tried to do an account transfer?
It’s one thing to share the credentials, but I don’t think we’ll see Steam games going from one account (owned by a deceased person) being transferred into an existing account of someone named in the will.
…which, of course, would be perfectly possible to happen with physical games.
Unless someone is against trans people existing, is there any merit to doing this? Why make a person go through puberty twice just because they’re “too young” to decide?
Where I live, immigrants are the new boogeymen too. But the Conservatives have a big market in immigrants too, so when “other immigrants, not YOU immigrants” doesn’t work, I guess that’s what trans people are for! Lol
I mean there’s having a discussion and then there’s just dishonest refusal to even acknowledge an opposing view.
Lol what does “having a discussion” look like to you? Maybe asking questions like “Why…?”, literally presenting an opportunity for someone to answer the question? Because maybe you need to re-read my initial comment.
You can’t fathom a reason people might be concerned about children being given non-medicinal drugs that block puberty?
Puberty blockers are being offered in a medical context, generally after extensive work with the patient. These aren’t hormones being bought over the dark web and taken (or administered) in secret.
There’s also a difference between being “concerned” (which the Doctors ARE…hence why these aren’t over-the-counter substances), and wanting it made illegal.
‘Crime is out of hand’: how young people turned to far right in east German city (www.theguardian.com)
Germans under 25 gave the AfD 16% of their vote in the European elections, with particular support in the east...
Visitors to Greece appear ill informed about heatwave risk, warn rescuers (www.theguardian.com)
Over the past week, three search and rescue operations have been started for tourists who have gone missing during treks on far-flung islands, including one for the popular TV presenter Michael Mosley, who was found dead on the island of Symi....
We built a mean game to test AI's ability to apologise (www.bbc.com)
The project was a test to see how artificial intelligence might change one of the most delicate types of human interaction: the interpersonal apology. The companies who make AI-powered chatbots suggest we should find ways to insert them into our lives when we don’t know what to say or how to say it. That’s all well and good...
Steam owner Valve accused of ripping off 14m UK gamers (www.bbc.com)
Valve Corporation is being accused of using its market dominance to overcharge 14 million people in the UK....
Conflicts reach highest peak globally since World War II (english.elpais.com)
New game from original creators of The Elder Scrolls has almost been backed on Kickstarter.
This new project from some of the folks who worked on the first 3 Elder Scrolls games looks great. It looks certain to be backed as well as it’s already at 99% on Kickstarter with a couple more weeks to go....
Fired employee hacked into company’s computer system and deleted servers, causing it to lose S$918,000 - CNA (www.channelnewsasia.com)
Kitsune Tails is a gay furry Mario-like steeped in Japanese mythology releasing August 1 (www.gamingonlinux.com)
Doom: The Dark Ages is introducing big changes to combat because id Software came to one core realization: "Every projectile mattered in the original Doom" (www.gamesradar.com)
South Korea fires warning shots after North Korea soldiers briefly cross border - CNA (www.channelnewsasia.com)
Layoffs hit Japan as Final Fantasy Brave Exvius developer asks 80 employees to “voluntarily resign” (automaton-media.com)
What was announced at Summer Games Fest that you are most excited for?
Gotta be Civ 7 for me, but I’d love to see some other highlights shouted out by people who are excited for them!
Mark Cerny: When making consoles, we're not trying to build low-cost PCs. From arcades to architect, the development legend discusses his 42-year career, PS5 surprises and the job of building games co (www.gamesindustry.biz)
Billionaire-Friendly Modi Humbled by Indians Who Make $4 a Day (www.bloomberg.com)
archive: archive.ph/reWnR
Galacticare Has Got That Old Bullfrog Spirit (aftermath.site)
No one should have to “grow a thicker skin”: Valorant studio commit to harsh penalties for harassment (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
As China’s internet disappears, ‘we lose parts of our collective memory’ (www.nytimes.com)
The number of Chinese websites is shrinking and posts are being removed and censored, stoking fears about what happens when history is erased....
What are some excellent free games/total conversions that are worth playing the whole thing?
I used up play a ton of Doom mods years ago and a lot of the TCs were fun but lacked substance beyond the surface. Some of the new ones are cool but overly complex. (The Sonic cart game has an hour long tutorial before you start). I was a big fan of Simon’s Destiny, the Castlevania mod for Doom....
Half-Life Was 95% Ready for Dreamcast (timemachiner.io)
What is the consensus on Super Mario Sunshine?
I always got the feeling that this game was seen as a classic. I never owned a Gamecube growing up, but I’m pretty sure I remember my friend having one and playing Sunshine a bit (although he was way more into Zelda and Smash)....
India elections: exit polls show Narendra Modi expected to win historic third term (www.theguardian.com)
After you die, your Steam games will be stuck in legal limbo (arstechnica.com)
Saw a article on a large number of gamers being over 55 and then I saw this which I believe needs to be addressed in our current laws.
[Warlockracy] The Russian state spends $10,000,000 to make the worst RPG of 2024 (www.youtube.com)
U.K. temporarily criminalizes puberty blockers for trans kids (www.lgbtqnation.com)